Wind Dervishes

Amiably pretty, sweetly inoffensive

the way the morning began its journey

toward completion of a summer's day.

Clear blue, the sky, sun seated on its

regal throne, in charge of all it

surveyed in the charged and heated

atmosphere, pitilessly broiling the

landscape below.  Lovely, withal.

Somewhere up there a protest was

brewing.  Solar winds dispersed not

only that orb's furnace-fierce radiating

heat, but pouting-damp clouds

lingering backstage; now they slowly

emerged, black-clad, bruised, to

engage and curtain the firmament.

Black embraced all that could be

seen.  And distant, warning rumbling

the grumbles of bad-tempered wind

dervishes whirling and whorling

the heavens with streaks of mean

tempered claps bringing notice to

the electric presence of their nasty

tantrums.  The searing, wicked gales

sling daggers of ice across the

landscape pinging shrilly on roofs

and windows; within, shielded

cowering, helpless creatures.

Howling derisively at the cowardly

sheltered, avalanches of rain

catapult from clouds densely crowding

out light, transforming day to night,

drenching, washing away the heat,

as cold fingers of dread ravage

trees and mountains, rattle birds

sheltering within thickets of ragged

leaves, relieving the world of

the concerns of enervating heat

and drying drought, leaving in their

wake a landscape devastated, broken

and deprived of collected calm.